Had not planned on writing a review of Synthesio tonight but after talking with and “seeing”  Michelle Chmielewski, Synthesio’s Community Manager, on the Agency Video for Synthesio,  figured now was a good time to write some brief but nice things.

There are so many platforms that are in this space, evolving quickly and until recently I was not aware of Synthesio or what they had to offer.   In the last two weeks I have had meetings with Synthesio (virtual, via Skype),  Brandtology (skype) and HotGrinds (in person, with Claude Vogel and Mark Dingle) and my mind is almost exploding with all the information that is coming in – and I like it that way, but sometimes, it is overpowering – but again,  I like that way.

Still, one thing all three platforms have in common – Synthesio, Brandtology and HotGrinds – besides their odd names (for example, I have a real problem pronouncing “Synthesio”) is they all provide “flashy” dashboards that are customized for each client and they all rely on human vetting of the data a customer sees. Another thing they seem to have in common is large Multinational Corporations among their clients who are willing to pay for data that is cleaned up and categorized by humans.   Prime Research has much the same thing – perhaps even more so.   I haven’t written about Brandtology yet – awaiting on their permission to use images from our meeting and on HotGrinds – I may have an update and post on then soon.

It seems there really is a low end, middle ground and high end in Social Media Monitoring - and Jeremiah Owyang may have said much the same thing in his post recently on Social Technology Buyers Matrix: Broad vs Specialized vs Do It Yourself.

From my point of view – the low end is the free tools that anyone can use, some are more sophisticated than others but can do some amazing monitoring if you don’t need a high degree of precision.   In the low end are some tools that are power but are inexpensive enough, and simple enough, that any one can use them or afford them like Viral Heat.   Someone who chooses the low end tools may just want a  quick answer or maybe they are not sure what they want – and are just searching around and are willing to take the insights such tools can offer as they come.

The middle ground is filled with do it yourself type platforms for analysis such as Techrigy, Radian6, Scout Labs, BrandWatch, Biz360, Sysomos, etc.   The middle ground platforms let you explore social media monitoring on your own but are generally much more enabled than the free stuff you can get a hold of.  But the middle ground is full of platforms that don’t agree with each other in even the most fundamental measures of amplitude of messaging and sentiment of messaging – and they are often not easy to customize to the particular needs of anyone’s organization but can do well in a number of settings, as long as you don’t mind putting in extra work and time to set them up with specific requirements.

Then there is the “high end” tools – the ones that humans help to filter – like Synthesio and Brandtology – they are for organizations that want data structured very cleanly and in just such a way as it will be useful to them – plus the companies that use it are willing to pay $$$$$$ to get a custom dashboard with data following in that they can immediately act on.

So … what does Synthesio offer that makes them special?

There’s a “Flash” Demo that shows you want the product might be like for a client once it’s live – I compared Honda, Audi and Toyota in Italy – I wasn’t offered the US as an option for this demo but I did see Synthesio is offering US data once you sign up.  I can’t really say that much about the demo except it’s beautiful – but that’s not neccessary an endorsement from me because I can’t do much with the demo but type in some names.  In other words – I don’t have any experience actually using Synthesio, so I can’t say how it would work for me.

On the other hand, since a Synthesio dashboard is created for a client – it’s unlikely that anyone who hasn’t actually signed on as a client will be able to talk about the platform in depth.   Synthesio has a Dashboard “wizard” that sets up the request form with details of what you want to track and mails it to headquarters where someone will reach out to you shortly.   Synthesio also  has some large clients - most are in Europe and Asia.

At this point – what else does Synthesio offer and  have?  Their community manager is very warm – Michelle Chmielewski and Synthesio is a sponsor of Monitoring Social Media BootCamp in London next month and I’ll be meeting most of the Synthesio team in London for the conference.

But I do want to say that platforms like Synthesio – because they must be set up for a client, and do require a bit of human monitoring on the backend – while they often provide superior insight, are not as easy to compare as the platforms like Radian6 and Sysomos that I can fully configure myself.

As a result – i can’t put Synthesio through it’s paces because I don’t have a working version that I control – perhaps, when I meet Michelle and the rest of the team in London, they will show me more about what Synthesio does on the backend, and a live dashboard of a real client.

Finally, I was mentioned on the Synthesio blog yesterday in a post on 3 ways to identify influencers in social media and I found my ideas described in a different way than perhaps, I would have expressed them, so I actually read the post carefully to see what Michelle said that she said, I said/wrote:

Identify influencers at post level

While the site on which information is published online affects how influential the information may become, an article (blog post, forum thread, tweet, etc.) itself can become more or less influential over time depending on how many times it has been shared, where, with whom, etc.

Marshall Sponder pointed out that it is the influence of an author that may weigh more heavily than that of the actual site (and will be speaking about it in London in March) ; why not go to the post itself ?

Here’s how I would say it – much of the traffic that comes to a blog comes from a small number of blog posts I have written, and most of the rest is long tail traffic from the thousands of other posts I’ve written over the last 4 years since I began writing at Webmetricsguru.com.  I said as much, years ago.   But I also said that when using a Social Media Monitoring platform to identify influencers – what we want is not a list of blogs – but a list of bloggers – or the influential themselves – and some contact information – the more the better – actually something closer to a list of journalists you’d get out of CisionPoint – or something like that.   Hardly anyone thinks that way – they don’t think in terms of the end user – what they want.   I think that’s what I meant.

Michelle also mentioned (and might have referred to my posts) TweepSearch (I’m liking FollowerWonk even more now) as an easy way to identify influencers on Twitter.

Have to admit, Michelle’s description of what I said might be better than what I actually said or wrote – I’m OK with that.

As far as what Synthesio actually offers – my feeling is the best place to go is the Synthesio blog as features and case studies are being shared on the blog.   And if your in London next month I’ll be there, and so will Synthesio – Join Us at Monitoring Social Media Bootcamp March 31st, 2010 in London

A few days ago I noted that Sysomos Heartbeat Now Talks with Salesforce which seems like a similar play to what Radian6 did with Salesforce last year.

The actual mechanics of interfacing a particular Salesforce implementation with a particular Sysomos heartbeat monitor isn’t shown – and my own demo of Heartbeat isn’t connected to a Salesforce – but it’s interesting that Social CRM is one of the next big things according to Gartner and Jacob Morgan.

“… Enterprise adoption of social media will occur primarily in the context of customer relationship management (CRM), according to Gartner. The analyst has predicted that 80% of all market growth in 2010 will come in this field, as organisations struggle to find a clear business case for leveraging social media as a tool for internal communication and collaboration.

Gartner says that it is those which use the technology as a platform for improving customer relationships and interaction that are most likely to see the greatest return on investment.

I suppose we should all be going out and using Bantam Live, or something like that – and I have thought about it a couple of times.

Also saw that Trendrr Launches Web Charting Dashboard For Entertainment Industry and I have a Trendrr account but haven’t been able, yet, to test the new platform, one of these days I will get to it.

I think the post I read on The Five Profitable Positions in any Marketplace by Grant Lange is one of the best things I’ve ever read and it explains marketing strategy really well.

After reading this post some things became a lot clearer to me. As the Grant Lange says:

….The five profitable positions for any market category are The Market Leader, The Second, The Alternative, The Boutique, and the New Category Leader. In each of these positions it is possible to make money, and possible to grow. But it is next to impossible to move from one position to another without outside help.

Your more likely to succeed if you understand what your position is in the first place – then build a strategy around it.  I wondered if there is a leeway in how one interprets what “position” they are in, and if so, the strategies that go with that position are affected.

In the last week there has also been two separate implementations of Facebook tracking within a Web Analytics platform – the first way of tracking Facebook is using Google Analytics by including Google Analytics as an image instead of setting the standard JavaScript. This method tracks every visitor to the custom facebook pages from within Google Analytics.  You do need to download some code and place it on your webserver – but it’s not that big a deal.  Here’s the information on what to download,etc:

Facebook – Google Analytics Version 1.1 (Updated 21st Feb, 2010).  For advanced method – Download this code to use on your server.

If you don’t have a Facebook fan page yet, visit our tutorial for code and help on creating customised Facebook fan pages.

The other implementation of Facebook tracking is from WebTrends, as reported by Mashable.

Webtrends ….  has rolled out new measurement capabilities for Facebook, including the ability to view Facebook data alongside data for other channels.

Tools like this are useful because Facebook’s own platform for this, Facebook Insights, runs three days behind, doesn’t measure custom tabs or apps, and doesn’t integrate with analytics for other digital marketing channels.

The tools work inside Facebook to provide detailed analytics data about applications, custom tabs, brand pages, contests and advertisements, among other things. This wasn’t easy to achieve because most of Facebook (Fan Pages included) doesn’t allow JavaScript, but Webtrends developed a custom API to get around that. Third-party applications built on the Facebook platform are easier because JavaScript is permitted.

Next, I read about how …  Google Voice Will Ruin Your Relationships ….

Long ago, someone wrote about how Google is out to control your dog and marry your wife. I don’t know how right he was about all that, but I certainly know that Google Voice is out to ruin relationships.

Turns out that Google Voice – especially in a noisy environment – is about as bad at understanding what your saying and transcribing it as Sentiment Analysis that is often used in Social Media monitoring is bad at understanding what people feel. In my mind, I connected both things and it made sense that translation software is looking at and having the same issues, I think, that Sentiment Analysis has, especially around noise.

I am interested in taking a look at Grogger – Grogger: A New Platform That Lets You Crowdsource Your Blog’s Content and wondering if I could actually build my own social network about this blog, something at BuddyPress was soposed to deliver, but appears to never have.  According to TechCrunch:

….. At its core, Grogger is an easy-to-use blogging platform, but rather than only exposing its editing tools to a handful of site administrators, they’re shown to everyone. When a user comes to your Grogger site and writes an entry (called a Grog), you can have it directly posted to your blog, or added to a moderation queue, where your site administrators can approve it. Once an entry has been approved, other users can vote it up using a ‘Like’ system, and administrators can ‘feature’ it to make it even more prominent. And while readers are free to contribute their own Grogs, they can also leave old-school comments under posts by other writers.

Looks like I was too late signing up

Oh well,  I guess the early bird catches the worm – there’s so much to try and so many good things out there it’s impossible to keep, perhaps I should give up trying.

Read that Yelp is being sued – Yelp Hit With Class Action Lawsuit For Running An “Extortion Scheme”

The case, which is styled Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital Inc. v. Yelp Inc., was filed on February 23, 2010, and is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. We have an e-mail in with Yelp and are awaiting a response.

The lawsuit essentially alleges that the heavily funded startup runs an “extortion scheme” and has “unscrupulous sales practices” in place to generate revenue, in which the company’s employees call businesses demanding monthly payments in the guise of advertising contracts, in exchange for removing or modifying negative reviews.

What’s to stop some insiders at Yelp from running their own extortion ring – maybe that’s what happened.  It’s an interesting case and I hope it doesn’t rain Cats and Dogs (not sure that’s funny, though).

There’s an Augmented Identity App Helps You Identify Strangers on the Street according to Popular Science, but it looks like it’s only for Android phones right now – looks to me that Augmented Reality and Social CRM are the two hottest trends this year, so far.

I don’t get so excited over this stuff anymore – it’s almost predictable that things will keep evolving and get better and better.

But then – The world needs all kinds of minds: Temple Grandin on TED.com and I should see the new movie about Temple Grandin soon, though I have known about her for a while.

The idea of thinking in pictures, thinking in details and doing hands on work – is important to the world – and in fact, my own approach to analytics is totally hands on.   She talks about different types of minds and the world needs those minds, I find that fascinating and am listening to it now.

Another metrics tracking platform that came out and ..  Social Media Metrics: Why Am I Counting Tweets Again? Ubervu is a pretty interesting platform  that also has a widget you can put on a blog that shows social media mentions around any subject you want to track – but now they’re doing a comparison between two words and I find the results are pretty good, such as they are.

And if that was not enough – Anil Batra has come up with an easy way to track Twitter links via Google Analytics .

But not all is great in metrics tracking land – TechCrunch had a story yesterday that wasn’t pretty –   How Does Compete Get Its Web Traffic Data? At Least One Way Sounds Very Sketchy. Actually – between Comscore and Nielsen and HitWise and Compete – just to name a few – they all say they have panel sizes and the number 2 million keeps coming up – but no one wants to tell you much about who those two million are and if they are the same two million (probably not) the other guys are using.  According to TechCrunch  …..

…. We were recently pointed to this post from last month by Ben Edelman, a Harvard privacy advocate. In it, he details the data the Upromise toolbar collects and sends out. This toolbar is used by college students looking for savings on various items across the web, and can be quite useful. But until a few weeks ago, it appears they were also sending web browsing (and more personal) data to Compete without anyone’s knowledge. Writes Edelman:

As shown in the “host:” header of each of the preceding communications, transmissions flow to the consumerinput.com domain. Whois reports that this domain is registered to Boston, MA traffic-monitoring service Compete, Inc. Compete’s site promises clients access to “detailed behavioral data,” and Compete says more than 2 million U.S. Internet users “have given [Compete] permission to analyze the web pages they visit.”

I am sure this will be sorted out soon – Compete is one service I use alot and even if some of the data is less than perfect, it’s a very useful platform and friends I have over at Compete have been very supportive of this blog.

As I get to the end of this post I could not resist writing about a new toy -

The first Iron Man movie was pretty good – looking forward to the next one coming out this summer – maybe we all need a little bit more heart …. speaking of which …. Power the Electromagnet In Your Heart With the Iron Man 2 Arc Reactor.

Finally – I have a post up at Web Analytics Rock Stars blog (IQ Workforce, who is a sponsor of this blog) on Using Sysomos Map Social Media Monitoring for SEO Keyword Research hope you get a chance to read it.

We’re  having a “snowpacolypse” in New York City and it’s been pretty busy  – there’s so much I want to write about and so little time.  Every day there new stuff happening – take today – Andy Beal announced Trackur  Free Version Of Its formally paid only  Social Media Monitoring Tool you can use it  free, as long as all your doing is a single search – that is one smart offer and he’s going to get a lot of people to sign up – and I just did.

Having said that – Trackur‘s functionality is so basic, just one or two cuts above Google Alerts – I find it hard to imagine  myself using it – but for someone that is not technical and just wants some basic information I think the price is right (free).

Maybe I’m missing something  – I’m not even seeing email alerts (which is what Google Alerts does) so to say Trackur is Google Alerts on steroids seems to be missing the point that doesn’t alert me about anything.

Would I pay for it if it wasn’t free (for one search) – maybe … but then again, with ViralHeat just coming into the the picture – you can get so much more from Viralheat than you can get from Tracker – if I really only had a few dollars to spend a month – I’d rather spend it with Viral Heat than going over to Trackur – but that’s just my opinion.   At least I could do some kind of analysis with Viralheat – not sure if Trackur lends it self to a measurement perspective – at least, not today.

But you can drill down and get more information on each item in your feed that your monitoring – and you can’t do that with Google Alerts – granted.

I like the  “share this article” link on each item – that’s a good idea and Trackur calculates an influence score, again, which Google Alerts does not do.

I have a problem with the way influence is calculated – the TrackurRank seems bogus – built on metrics that don’t really add up to influence, like a bunch of links and blog mentions – at best, both are extremely shaky proxies for influence.

But … but …. Trackur is free – at least, for one search and if your needs are really basic – and I mean, really basic – I think this is a good basic package – a very, very basic package.  I’m almost tempted to say that if you are going to use Trackur you could have easily just used Google Alerts – but that is just me.

Also, I heard about a new tool called SocialWebAnalyzer that just examines your social media presence and I put in my own website – webmetricsguru.com (this blog).   There’s a lot of link statistics and I’m not sure how much I’ll use this tool but thought my readers might want to know about both developments.